Plot Bunny Farm
#1
I am going to go even more nuts than usual with all of these kicking about in my head, so imagine this as a basket of cute, adorable little fluffy plot bunnies looking for good homes. Just look at their woffly little noses and big, pleading eyes...

Golden Compass – 'Shadows and Dust' Sheldon as the expert on 'Dust', trying to decode the alethiometer before his rivals in Oxford.

Ancient Rome - A citizen buys a blonde barbarian slave girl. His Centurion colleague opines that she will almost certainly stab them in their sleep, if her terrible cooking doesn't get them first.

Dark City/Adjustment Bureau – 'Dork City' Writes itself, really.

H P Lovecraft - ditto. There's even a built-in Eldritch Abomination. And I'm fairly sure Leonard's family are from New England. Non-Euclidian geometry, academic feuds and that annoying upstairs neighbour with the viola...

Pirates - more PotC and Cutthroat Island than historically accurate. But Sheldon's from Galveston, he's far more likely to have pirates and rumrunners in his ancestry than cowboys. Though -

Wild (Wild) West - More Brisco County Jnr than Alias Smith and Jones, probably, but Penny as Calamity Jane would work.

Prohibition/Noir - Howard would make a good gangster in the tradition of Dutch Schultz. Smoky nightclubs, a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window, and a hard-boiled PI (who doesn't actually like whisky or cigarettes)

Highlander - Because swords. Either Sheldon discovers Penny beheading someone in a parking lot, or she discovers that Sheldon has been hiding out with the Cooper clan since the American Revolutionary War. (A little 'Sleepy Hollow' may or may not have crept in here.)

Renaissance Italy - DaVinci! Sheldon, Penny the tavern wench who models for artists, Leonard the artist who has no paint on his paintbrush. Howard the brilliant artificer and Raj the mute astronomer. Dodging the Inquisition in Venice. Masks, political skulduggery and canals to fall in.

Medieval – 'The Nerd of the Rose' Sheldon in that cassock in 'Codpiece Topology' needs to be sleuthing about in a creepy monastic library.

Screwball Romance/Crime Caper - Anything Hawksian can be rewritten for these guys. And there's things like 'The Lady Vanishes', too. Crime AND trains.

Pacific Rim – 'Kitty Lantern'

Bladerunner - Penny the 'skin job' hiding out in the building.

B-movies in general - there are loads of sci-fi, horror and crime plots that could stand a savvy waitress and an uptight scientist bickering through them. Some actually did in the first place. 'Alien Trespass' pretty much only needs names changing.

Hobo - something about Sheldon in that hat in 'Pancake Batter', just imagining them all in some bizarre Beckett-like existence under a bridge or something, bickering round a bin fire. Like the Canting Crew in Discworld.

Brave New World - Bernard/Leonard, Lenina/Penny and John the Savage/Sheldon

It's possible that some of these might end up in the Arkham Collection, but I'd love to see other people have a go. (And if anyone's wondering why something obvious like 'The Mummy' isn't on here, yeah, I'm writing that one already.)
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#2
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Every time you watch Classic BBT, another Plot Bunny gets its wings:
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#3
Y'know, I used to be rather interested in the idea of AUs in which Raj has a secret identity or a dark side,
(Raj is secretly a criminal/gangster/vampire/hitman, whatever). It makes sense in an ironic way because Vintage Raj is quiet and timid and gentle, at least some of the time.

But now they've given him this "girlfriend" who likes violence and has a hidden or not-so-hidden dark side, and that, to me, sort of puts the kibosh on that idea.

In the Vintage Years, the idea that Mute!Raj is not really as shy, naive, or innocent as he seems, could have a lot of fanfic potential. Having a character do unexpected things or play against type in some way can often have fanfic potential.

Of course, the whole point of fanfic, especially AU fanfic, is that it's different from canon (ahem, take note!), so it's still perfectly possible to write a fic in which sweet, quiet, Season 1 Raj is secretly a powerful druglord or a vampire or something, but nowadays this character is at the mercy of a "partner" who seems to be psycho at worst and distasteful at best, so that AU idea loses some of its appeal, to me.

I dunno who thought that a menacing character with dark secrets was comedy gold, but that's a very strange story-telling decision. I don't know how far they'll go with this Emily character and I don't care, but it seems particularly cruel and inappropriate to pair someone as damaged as Raj with a threatening person who makes him nervous.

So, he's no longer mute, he conquered his fear, only to be confronted with something worse? This storyline sounds like enough to scare him back into mutism. The writers have seemingly un-done their own message: Raj learns that the world isn't such a scary place...no, wait, it IS. This makes it seem like his fear of women was, in fact, totally justified. It's just a really, really weird direction to take. What were they thinking, putting the most frightened and psychologically vulnerable character with someone who seems like the embodiment of his earlier fears?

There's fun-dark, and then there's icky-dark. Incest jokes and murder-jokes and hints of sadomasochism are icky-dark. If they wanted a character with a flair for the dark side, why didn't they make one of those Goth girls a recurring character? Goths generally know the difference between fantasy and reality, and they're not genuinely disturbed or disturbing, they just like spooky things in a fun way. Some girl who likes black lipstick and bat-shaped cookies is far preferable to a character who is literally *turned on by violence* and has this deeply unappealing sadosexual thing going on. Some topics are just straight-up inappropriate for a light mainstream comedy, IMO, and this is one of them.

TL;DR: once upon a time, it might've been fun to read and write fanfic exploring a possible dark side of the Original Five. But now, that seems far less appealing because A, B, and E really *are* dark, cruel, twisted, and icky. TPTB have taken themes that belong only in batcrap-crazy AU fanfic and put them into the actual show. This is creepy-bad, not creepy-good. I don't feel like exploring a possible sinister side of these characters when they're being (arguably) victimized in canon and they seem more helpless and vulnerable than ever before.

It's annoying when fanfic ideas get "jossed" by the show.

"What's a little harmless necrophilia", indeed. Dodgy

ETA: I still wanna see SH play Bugsy Siegal, but that ain't gonna happen.
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#4
Just to add a positive plot-bunny to this depressing post:

Imagine a fic with the characters of your choice as rival stage-magicians at the turn of the 20th century, like in "The Prestige" or "The Illusionist." Fun possibilities...
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#5
Plot bunnies:

Character of your choice meets their own clone. Will they be friends or enemies?

Highwaymen (Highwaywomen?)

Shape-shifting. Animal totems/familiars.

The Island of Dr.Koothrappali (!!!)

Hollywood/Socialite/Idle Rich AU (this satire might be a little *too* on-point, lately.)

Narnia (this could be really sweet and beautiful.)
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#6
Not quite the correct thread for this, but here goes:

I would like to participate in some fic exchanges, but I am soooo leery of offering or requesting BBT as a fandom, because my likes/dislikes/squicks regarding this fandom are a mile long, and because I suspect that any other people who might offer & request BBT for these exchanges are people whose views and preferences I do not share. Of course, part of a fic exchange is listing your likes and dislikes, but I just have a gut feeling that no good will come of this.

IDK, it's just very frustrating. The obvious answer is to offer and request other fandoms and leave BBT out of it entirely, which I can certainly do, and that's probably what I *will* do. But it's frustrating.

This fandom is just so weirdly...undead, I guess you could say. It makes me feel very alone, fandom-wise. There are no avenues for participating in the fandom or celebrating the parts of it that I liked, except for writing/creating things myself and sort of fanning in a vacuum, if that makes any sense.

On a different but possibly related note, it makes me so angry that people seem to have forgotten/dismissed the idea of Howard/Raj. (I mean in the broadest sense, not necessarily as a romantic/sexual pairing.) Yes, the show has forgotten/dismissed it, too, but ***that doesn't retroactively render the earlier seasons null and void.*** Nowadays, the characters on this show are people I don't recognize anymore, and I do not hold the Vintage Characters responsible for the actions of the "new" characters. If you think Howard is a jerk who threw away his friendship with Raj, or if you think Howard/Raj ceased to be relevant the moment Bernadette was introduced, you're engaging in revisionism/retconning. (the same could be said of other friendships & pairings, probably.)

I've never seen a fandom so quick to abandon their non-canon pairings the instant that a canonical love interest was introduced. That's not how non-canon shipping works, and it's especially not how slash works. They just obey whatever the official narrative tells them to do. "Oh, this is the new thing, I will transfer my attention to this, now." It's dumb and shallow. If you think H/R or S/P immediately ceased to be a thing just because the characters were given canonical love-interests, then you I'd say you *really* don't understand what shipping or fanfic are about.

"Howard is a jerk who ruined his friendship with Raj." Um, no, the writers wanted different character-groupings, so they shuffled the duos around. As usual, people are assigning Watsonian explanations to Doylist decisions.

IDK, I'm not making much sense right now, I'm just kinda angry and frustrated. As I said, the "new" characters are people I don't recognize, they behave in ways that are utterly OOC, and therefore I don't incorporate any of that into my personal concept of the show.

New!Howard *is* a jerk towards Raj. That's true. But I'm not a fan of New!Howard. That's never who I'm referring to when I say "Howard" or talk about the H/R ship. People are dreaming if they think there was some natural plot-progression in which H and R grew apart so that H/B and R/Whoever could happen, or whatever the theory is. There is no master plan or long-term plotting or actual character development on this show; there's random occurrences at the whims of TPTB. FWIW, I always mean Vintage!Sheldon when I say "Sheldon", too.

I will move this to a different thread, if asked, because I guess I'm just venting/ranting now. I guess my point is that
nothing can stop me from having the feelings and opinions that I have, about my preferred ships or characters. Nothing. "Such-and-such happened in Season 8!" is only relevant if you actually watched it, which I didn't. Recent episodes or recent seasons are only relevant if you choose to accept them as valid, which I don't. That's not my schema. The earlier seasons are my schema. If you read a book and then you choose not to read the sequel, did the events of the sequel actually happen? I would say no, not for you.

When I talk about the show or the characters, or the friendships therein, I'm talking about the Vintage version. Always. And nothing will make me believe that those things are somehow invalidated by what comes later. IMO people who think that way are fickle. "OMG, this happened, and then that happened, and then this happened!" will not stop me from shipping what I ship or believing what I believe.

I just get sad sometimes that there is nothing left of my ship, and people almost seem to want to retroactively disown it, as if they're embarrassed to have ever liked something that the canon eventually dropped or downplayed or ruined, as if they want to be on the "winning side." That's what I mean by fickle.

I am very alone in this fandom. /drama queen.
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#7
Louise, I think the problem is there are two kinds of BBT fans out there. The first is the vintage fan/writer who started watching from the beginning. Unfortunately, most of these people have left the fandom because the show has become stupid and the characters toxic (or they've come here to rant). The second are what I call the Syndication fans/writers. These are the people who saw a couple of episodes in syndication and only really became "fans" in season 5 or later. These are the fans that don't realize (or don't care) H/R were a great couple (romantic or not) these are also the Shamy's who only want the ball-busting romances of Howard knuckling under to Bernadette, and Sheldon becoming Amy's sex toy. Most importantly, these people believe NOTHING important ever happened before season 5. These people can't be reasoned with since logic holds no interest to them and if seasons 1-4 are mentioned at all by them all you hear is how Howard was practically a rapist before he met Bernadette, Sheldon had absolutely no redeeming qualities until he met Amy and Penny was always a drunken loser that needed Leonard "to save her"
“There are no scenes more fun to do, I feel like, than the ones between Sheldon and Penny. They are such a wonderful odd couple.” - Jim Parsons
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#8
Yeah, this. I just have little fits of rage, from time to time...Undecided

It's also 3am. What are *you* doing up, huh? Wink

Me:

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#9
You have managed to articulate exactly how I feel - especially the denial of everything past a certain point. (I have decided to disavow everything Marvel past a certain point, it is just so shitty. And the fact that it is down to Joss Whedon hurts like a different betrayal.)
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#10
(05-30-2015, 04:30 PM)Nutz Wrote: if seasons 1-4 are mentioned at all by them all you hear is how Howard was practically a rapist before he met Bernadette, Sheldon had absolutely no redeeming qualities until he met Amy and Penny was always a drunken loser that needed Leonard "to save her"

What they've done with Howard is the centuries-old stereotype of the money-grubbing Jew who preys on the blonde Gentile girl both sexually and financially. It straight-up is. It's really blatant. Maybe that sounds extreme, but it's a very specific stereotype and they're hitting all the notes.

Of course, they're also portraying him as henpecked and powerless, moreso as the seasons roll on, so that's a different variation, but this is straight-up the "Jew-as-parasite, feeding off others" thing. This occurred to me all of a sudden, and I can't believe no one has called them on it. I don't typically go looking for things to be offended by, but this is really shameless.

ETA: I know I've gotten really off-topic here in the Plot Bunny thread, so I'll move this if asked.
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